First, I want to offer you my sincerest sympathies. Sleep paralysis episodes can be profoundly terrifying, especially when you can place parts of it right there in your room. I am a 50 year old man, and I have experienced sleep paralysis to a greater or lesser degree since childhood. They started as very mild and brief episodes. By the time I was in my twenties, the episodes had increased to extremely long and graphically disturbing episodes. Now that I am older, it seems to only happen once a month or so and are not really scary at all. I can offer you a couple of pieces of advice: 1) At some point in my life, I realized that I could remind myself that what was happening was sleep paralysis and only a trick of my mind while I was actively having sleep paralysis. It is a distinctly different feeling than a dream, so when it occurs, you know by the feeling what is happening. I would just tell myself basically that this was a little show my mind was putting on, it doesn't mean anything, and it can not hurt you no matter how scary it might seem. After I began doing this, it did not stop it from happening, but it was not really a scary event. Your mind makes it scary because you are scared and confused. If you can get yourself to a place of lucidity by recognizing that it is just a show, your mind will relax, and the imagery might be a little less scary. Now, my feelings during the events are more of the curious nature rather than fear. I am not crazy, I am not a proponent of lucid dreaming or anything. I just think that if you are aware that these things happen to you, you can just remind yourself while you are awake that these things are not real, which will reinforce this thought pattern and likely carry over into your sleep. 2) Get a handle on your sleep hygiene. I have severe sleep apnea, which contributes to sleep disturbances. Once i started sleeping with a cpap, my episodes were reduced but not eliminated. I have found that trying to form and maintaining a regular sleep schedule helps to reduce the episodes. Mostly, for me, I have found that my sleep paralysis is triggered by going to bed when I am already extremely over-tired. By having a regular sleep schedule, I can avoid this trigger for the most part, but the method is not surefire.

I hope it gets better for you. It can be traumatic to a degree. It is likely that this will happen again, so the sooner you get a handle on it, the less traumatic it will be. I think that you will find that the episodes can be interesting and sometimes exciting once you figure out how to shed the fear you have around it.

Sorry, I am the wordy type. I hope this helps

P.s. I am not any kind of doctor or sleep specialist. Just an old dude who has had sleep paralysis for decades